


He's Not Here

by wewriteletters



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Ending, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Blood, Depression, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hallucinations, Non graphic depictions of self harm, Spoilers for Episode 19, Suicide Attempt, literally my third fic with a title from next to normal...this is a cry for help
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:34:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23781712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wewriteletters/pseuds/wewriteletters
Summary: Major spoilers for Episode 19 (The Professionals).Alternate ending, where the police arrive ten minutes later. And what Gil already knew would be a heartbreaking evening, turns into a complete nightmare.
Relationships: Eve Blanchard & Malcolm Bright, Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright, Past Eve Blanchard/Malcolm Bright
Comments: 22
Kudos: 149





	He's Not Here

**Author's Note:**

> I quiet literally wrote this instead of sleeping last night (I have gotten maybe three hours of sleep in the past twenty four hours because of this show #lovethatforme) and figured I'd post it since it's rare for me to complete something so quickly. The new episode absolutely wrecked me, but I've been specifically thinking about beaten down Malcolm seemed while in his apartment at the end of the episode. His grief for Eve was so intense and his saying "I can't do this anymore" made me wonder what he would have done if the police hadn't shown up when they did...and this story was born! Please be mindful of the tags and know that ending is pretty ambiguous. Hope you enjoy!

Malcolm couldn’t do this anymore.

He’d thought that a lot of times in the past. When he had to tell another lie about why he came back from school covered in bruises. When his night terrors got so bad, he started hallucinating again. When he found out his father had planned to kill him. 

And now, when he was sitting at home, watching Eve wander through his loft, a wraith that was destined to haunt his mind forever. 

He couldn’t do this anymore.

Getting drunk was his first mistake. Malcolm knew alcohol would impair his judgment, cloud his mind, make everything even more disorienting than it already was, but he didn’t care. He needed some kind of relief and the bottle of scotch his mother had given him as a welcome home present provided it, at least temporarily. 

He wasn’t completely sure how he got back to his apartment in the first place. Or where he had been before then. He remembered riding in a taxi, but that was that was about as far as his mind would take him. 

He was disassociating again. Perfect. Just what he needed right now. 

Malcolm made his way from the kitchen island over to his desk, glass in one hand, bottle in the other, already feeling the liquor start to take effect. He had always been a lightweight and it wasn’t long before he was having trouble focusing on the space in front of him. 

Somehow, out of the blurriness, Eve was there, clear as day. She was wearing a white dress (his hallucinations were nothing if not unsubtle) and seemed to float and glow, toeing the line between angel and ghost. 

Malcolm had brought Eve to see his father. He hadn't listened when his father told him to stop pressing for answers, and his stubbornness had cost Eve her life. Endicott had killed Eve because of Malcolm. He had just tried to kill his father because of Malcolm. Who would he target next? His mother, his sister, Dani, Gil? He was putting everyone he knew in danger. 

There was only one way out. 

Maybe if he was dead, Endicott would leave his family alone. Malcolm didn’t need to think through the logic or make assumptions about possible outcomes, he just needed to convince himself that this was for the best, that he was doing this for his family. Even in his drunken haze, Malcolm knew that this would destroy his mother and sister. But he was doing this for them. They’d see that one day. 

And besides, Malcolm couldn’t do this anymore.

Most suicides are impulsive choices. Most people make the decision within three hours of committing the act. The statistics rolled through his head, pulled from the thousands of psychology texts he had read over the past fifteen years of his life. If Malcolm had any more clarity of thought, he might have found it ironic that just this morning he was telling the team that just because a person was traumatized, medicated, and depressed, didn’t mean they were suicidal and pointed to himself as an example.

But that morning already felt like a lifetime ago. That was before Eve’s death had truly sunken in, before he realized she was just going to become another vision to haunt him. Before he realized it was going to be impossible to bring Endicott to justice. Before he watched his father gorge a man’s eyes out in front of him. 

Before he had gone to speak with Eddie in the hospital. 

Was that where he was before he went home? Malcolm vaguely remembered feeling furious, rushing out of the precinct, and going...somewhere? He remembered a hospital room, but the rest of the details were a blur. 

But still, what little memory he had brought an intense pain to his chest. Malcolm’s mind was telling him not to go down another rabbit hole into the depths of his psyche. 

Just look at what happened last time he tried to remember something about his past. 

He decided not to write a note. He doubted anything he put in it would make much sense anyway. He also knew he wasn’t going to use pills; he had tried that in the past, and all it had gotten him was a trip to the ER and his mother sobbing into his shoulder. No, if he was going to do this, he needed a method that wouldn’t fail. Malcolm momentarily regretted never buying a gun when he moved to New York; it would definitely be the easiest and least painful way to go. He’d have to settle for something a bit messier. 

Malcolm’s eyes were immediately drawn over his shoulder, where his twin shelves of weapons loomed behind him, keeping guard from some invisible threat. 

That would do nicely. 

He stood up, balancing one hand on the desk to keep from shaking too much. With his free hand, he unbolted the cabinet door and swung it open. Malcolm did have a few antique rifles and a pair of nineteenth dueling pistols, but no ammunition. Besides, he didn’t even know if they’d still fire.

And he’d always preferred blades.

After a quick glance around the options, Malcolm settled on a World War Two era Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife. He had bought it at the estate sale of a US marine a few years ago. It was one of his newer pieces, but he figured that just meant it would have a sharper edge. For now, it was substance over style.

It was eerie how the clouds in Malcolm’s mind suddenly seemed to part when he gripped the knife in his hand. He was almost instantly hyper focused on the blade, flipping it over and around, surprisingly coordinated given how much he had to drink. Behind him, he felt Eve’s cold gaze examining him and the knife. He turned back towards the desk, doing his best to ignore the shadowy figure haunting his apartment, and took another sip of his drink, trying to keep up the nerve to actually go through with this. 

After a few moments, Malcolm made his way to his bed, clutching the glass in one hand and the knife in the other like they were lifelines. He was acutely aware of Eve following him. Her expression hadn’t changed since she appeared; she still bore a look of innocence, with a small smile.

She was smiling at him. Malcolm almost buried his face in his hands again, if only to block out her gaze.

He just had to remember the fact that soon, she would be gone. Just like the rest of the visions that had haunted him since he was ten years old. 

Once in his bedroom, he set the glass down on the side table and took a seat on the edge of the bed. He rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. The knife was still in his right hand, which was now shaking so much, he could barely keep his grip on the handle. Eve walked towards him, her presence taunting him. 

Just do it already. It’s the only way. Malcolm couldn’t even imagine continuing on after this. The woman he loved was dead because of him, and now he would never be free of her spirit. He just wanted to rest, for once in his life. 

Eve came even closer, wandering towards Malcolm until she was standing right in front of him. He shook his head, feeling tears start to fall. 

“Please,” he begged. “Go away. Just give me one final moment of peace.”

Malcolm knew he didn’t deserve that. But he still closed his eyes tightly, praying that when he opened them again, he would be alone.

Instead, he saw Eve reaching her hand out to him. Malcolm instinctively scooted backwards on the bed. It felt like the temperature in the loft had dropped fifty degrees, and as Eve took Malcolm’s wrist in her grasp, he felt like he was drowning. 

“Eve…I’m so sorry.”

She didn’t respond. She simply moved her hand down from his wrist, until she was wrapping her own fingers around his. 

Around the knife. 

Malcolm sniffed and nodded. He was ready to let go. 

With Eve guiding the blade, Malcolm pressed the knife into the delicate flesh of his left forearm, and pulled it down from his wrist to the crook of his elbow in one swift motion. 

The pain burst through the haze Malcolm had been in all evening, and he found himself curling in towards his chest. He began sobbing violently, the tears making it difficult to see what was in front of him; it was just a mess of red and white. He felt the blood pouring all over him, soaking his pants and pooling on the floor. It was somehow both freezing to the touch and boiling. Malcolm nearly dropped the knife as he instinctively brought his other hand over to try and staunch the bleeding. He felt so light headed, he thought he might just pass out now.

But before he could, Eve was grabbing his hand away from the wound on his wrist. He screamed at the contact- it felt so real, it was real, it had to be real- but still found himself unable to look away from her face. 

She was covered in water. Her once pristine white dress was now sticking to her pale skin and her hair was a tangled mess of dirt. The color in her face was practically all gone, replaced with a gray tone and her eyes were sunken back into her skull. 

Malcolm wanted to scream more, but his energy was rapidly depleting. Flashbacks of Eve, of his father, of the Girl in the Box, of Gil, were exploding in his head like fireworks and he knew he was nearly gone. 

Eve wrestled the knife out of his right hand and forced it into his left, silently urging him to repeat what he had just done. It was nearly impossible to get a grip on the weapon in his blood soaked palm, but he must have done well enough because the next thing Malcolm knew, he was lying on his back, two gaping wounds on both arms draining the life from him. 

In the final moments before he lost consciousness, Malcolm felt oddly serine. His eyes began to flutter and his breaths became shallower with each inhale. 

The last thing he saw before the world went black was Eve, bending over him, her hand stroking his hair. She looked like herself again. In fact, not only was she no longer a corpse, she wasn’t wearing the white dress either. She was in the oversized University of North Carolina shirt she wore for pajamas and her blonde hair was falling loosely across her face. 

“Go to sleep, Malcolm. I’ll be right here when you wake up. Just like always.” 

There were no more ghosts when Malcolm closed his eyes.

\-----------------------------------

Gil had braced himself, but he still winced when the ESU unit broke down Malcolm’s door. Glass flew everywhere, and he held out a hand telling Dani and JT to wait until the other men were in the apartment.

“NYPD! We have a warrant for- oh my God! Lieutenant, we need a bus, now!”

Gil didn’t even process the words as he rushed in. He had barely processed this entire evening in general. Edrisa solemnly handing him the DNA results, the phone call from the DA saying a judge had issued a warrant for Malcolm Bright’s arrest, being told by his boss that this was his mess to clean up; through all of it, Gil had detached himself. It was the only way he could cope with what was happening. He had to see Malcolm as just another murder suspect, not the kid he had helped raise since he was ten years old. He didn’t have a choice.

But now, seeing Malcolm laying on his bed, eyes closed, his skin deathly pale, the only color being the dark red that was covering his arms and clothing, all Gil could see was the vulnerable, young boy he had met so many years ago. A kid who needed his help, then and now. 

“JT, radio for EMS now! Dani, get over here and help me stop the bleeding.” Gil wasn’t even sure if the kid was still alive, but he wasn’t entertaining that possibility. He rushed over to Malcolm’s dresser, pulling out two random shirts before moving to sit on the bed. He quickly checked for a pulse on Malcolm’s neck and almost fainted in relief when he felt the slightest flutter of a heartbeat. 

Dani had already taken one of the shirts and was using it to tie a tourniquet above Malcolm’s elbow. “Gil, he’s lost so much blood, I don’t know if he-”

“Stop it, Powell, that’s an order.” Gil mirrored the detective's motions with Malcolm’s right arm, but the sensation of the kid's blood on his hands almost made him vomit. 

“Didn’t want to take responsibility for what he did I guess,” one of the ESU officers chuckled. “Pretty cowardly for a cold blooded killer.”

“Shut the hell up, Adams,” Dani screamed. “And put your guns down, you think Bright’s in any state to attack someone?”

Gil was too terrified to even be offended by the comment. Why would Malcolm do something like this? Gil knew how much he was struggling with Eve’s death, but he never imagined he’d try something like this. He desperately flipped back through their interactions that day, trying to pull out a moment that would lead to some clarity. Hadn't Malcolm made a point about suicide just that morning? Did he somehow find out the police were coming for him? Had something occurred when he questioned the now deceased guard in the hospital? Was this some grand plan he had to snuff out Endicott himself? 

But Gil knew that this was all too real to be some deception on Malcolm's part. And he saw the empty glass of scotch on the bedside table. Gil had seen first hand how easily Malcolm could be overwhelmed with the demons that haunted him. There had been times in his childhood when Malcolm had tried to get rid of them the same way. 

The only difference was this time, Gil hadn't been there to help him. 

“EMS is four minutes out,” JT announced, stepping towards the bed and throwing Adams and the rest of the ESU team, who were now dispersing around the loft to secure the scene, a glare. “Gil, let me.”

Gil didn’t protest when JT gently moved him aside to take over wrapping Malcolm’s arm. The older man quickly positioned himself so he was sitting by Malcolm’s head, and started stroking his hair. 

“I’m so sorry, kid. You’re gonna be okay, you’re gonna get through this.” Gil didn’t know if he was talking about Malcolm not bleeding to death in the next five minutes, or the entire situation they were in right now. He didn’t believe Malcolm had actually killed that guard. The kid could be impulsive, but he hated hurting anyone and never even wanted to use lethal force when taking down a suspect. But Gil also knew that Endicott had eyes and ears everywhere, and if he was behind framing Malcolm, he would just have to play along for now. He had hoped being there when Malcolm was arrested would help him some, at least until he figured out a way to convey what was really going on to him, but he knew no matter what happened, tonight wasn’t going to be easy for either of them.

But he had never expected this. 

“Everything’s going to be okay, kid.” Gil repeated the phrase over and over again, holding Malcolm’s face in his hands, as sirens blasted from outside and Dani began to cry: “I can’t find his pulse!” 

“Everything’s going to be okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please hmu on tumblr @ malclombright and scream about how hot Malcolm looked in that black shirt with me.


End file.
